Secondary Market

I have seen a few different forms of Puerh Swaps attempted to be initiated, for some reason they seldom ( never?) seem to work out, usually they fizzle out after a little while. I know for awhile there was a blogspot blog, in which all you had to do was request to become an author, and people would post what in their collections they wouldn't mind offering samples. But again the whole thing seemed to fail only after a short stint of activity.

the_skua wrote:Out of curiosity, where are the secondary markets for pu-erh? I know that Taobao is significant, but I can't imagine that I'd find a lot of Essence of Tea or Yunnan Sourcing pressings on there. Where do people go if they're seeking sold out past productions from custom vendors like these...or puershop or Tea Urchin or whomever...

eBay has nothing. TeaTrade doesn't seem to cater to the puerh collector market. I don't see a lot of people swapping cakes here.

??

well to be honest i don't think yunnan sourcing is a big vendor. it just happens to sell to the western world and has many cakes, but even so i don't know it and i can't be wrong i just have the feeling its a very small vendor. many teas i was looking for i can't find at yunnan sourcing too. i also don't think yunnan sourcing is a primary dealer. yunnan sourcing is a secondary dealer too to my knowledge, who just happens to be in china.but i could be wrong.

shah82 wrote:Who's the moneybags with the iron hands and clean warehouses that will finance such a marketplace?

Additionally, puerh tea has been subject to a marketing oriented (instead of government) Gresham's Law effect. The market is dominated by people selling crap to one another, with high prices for liquid acceptable items that aren't super-scarce, and anything that's honestly good and scarce goes straight into the hoard. There were plenty of BGTs made from 1999-whenever. They were good, but not spectacularly better than many other things. Same with the Bok Choy banzhangs from '00-'06. They tasted good, and enough people knew what they were like, and thus, they are fairly liquid. They also are hugely expensive, especially for the hedons. Then there are all the crap Dayi and Xiaguan to all the relatively poor who speculate a little or use for gifts. Regularly, some cache managers decide that a tea's ready to flog (Dayi Secret Fragrance and Changtai '03 Bulang has gotten a bit more attention just now in the Sinosphere), and posts start showing up about how good it is. Hopefully, for the speculators, a mania starts.

What I'm trying to get across here is that any accessible reseller will have high costs, and lots of need for expertise (because scammers will target you), and a great deal of effort would be needed to stock things that need little marketing help (or you can try it Puerhshop style, I suppose, what with 2oz sample packets and promotional sampling events, or something). It will be very difficult to buy *anything* worthwhile, given that puerh is a durable good, in such a way that you can buy low and sell high, for anything with a steady demand. I mean, are you going to find people selling '09, '10 Nadacha? '05, '06 XZH? Or are they going to just inquire among their tea friends and capture all of the price? There just aren't enough people into puerh in the West for anything to be liquid enough for consignment practices that's not dollar-store style.

yes its very hard and tricky business... its doubtful its worth the risk and afford it takes... but it definitely would be fun to be the big tea boss.well the problem is most people in the west will probably not recognize a good pu erh anyway, so it doesn't matter if they pay or not. lets say they would pay but they pay that amount for bad pu erh anyway than all your time was wasted and you made absolutely no money storing it.also the climate conditions are not right here, even harder is the knowledge you have to have. you have to have to be a big tea master not only definite enough to taste it, you must know to store it and combine all changes of the tea in your head and how it came about. i think even if you had good tea to start with, it won't come out that great.

Ps yes i think you are right, i think the people who stored the tea don't make the big money anyway.